1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to automatic musical instruments. More specifically, the present invention relates to the operation of musical instruments that perform in a manner similar to a conventional music box.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various apparatus for operating musical instruments and thereby enabling them to perform musical fragments, by way of percussion and/or vibration effects, are well known in the art. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,651,731, 6,153,822, 7,642,730, 6,291,749, 4,144,791, 6,960,711 and 7,544,870.
The earliest examples of such an apparatus usually had a rotary cylinder or barrel that is fitted with pegs or similar members which, directly or through some other mechanism, acted upon sound devices, such as slats, strings, tongues or others of similar nature. In certain cases, as occurs with music boxes, the above-mentioned pegs are fixed and it is not feasible to change their position at will in order to vary the musical composition.
Traditionally, music boxes have been limited by the size of the cylindrical shaped body or barrel upon which the music itself can be represented. Upon activation, only the music described by the physical representation of the barrel can be expressed, and nothing more. Upon one single revolution of the cylindrical body, the music repeats itself, thus limiting the musical composition reproduction to a fraction of a complete piece. This is an extreme limitation that, if it could be overcome, would greatly extend the useful range of music boxes.
An improvement on this range limitation of the traditional music box has been the addition of user-removable pegs. This improvement allowed for changing the barrel music to suit the user, but the resulting improved music boxes are still limited by the temporal duration of the music that can be mechanically fitted onto a barrel and played in a single revolution of the barrel or cylinder.
Player pianos and their modern counterpart, the reproducing piano, are another type of automated musical instrument intended to perform musical compositions independently—i.e., without real-time, human interaction or input. Typically, the apparatus for these instruments use perforated metal discs or barrels, paper piano rolls, or, in the case of the modern reproducing piano, MIDI computer connections and/or digital CD-ROM interfaces which drive the piano through pneumatic or electronic means to reproduce musical compositions automatically.
While pianos utilizing these technologies are typically capable of reproducing full or nearly full compositions without much real-time, human interaction, they do have limitations. For example, such instruments when playing do not provide those in the vicinity of them with the visual stimulation provided by a music box's standard rotating cylinder or barrel.
Thus, there continues to exist a need for an apparatus that can better automate the playing of certain types of musical instruments so as to enable them to play a longer temporal duration of, or a greater percentage of, a musical composition than that which can be mechanically fitted onto a rotating cylinder or barrel and played in a single revolution of the barrel.